I played the game many times but was always unclear on why the lifestream was also constrained. My assumption was that Aeris was also constrained by Sephiroth/Jenova's magic seeing as it is implied that Aeris' spirit (and not just the planet) was responsible for rallying the lifestream. The constraint being that Aeris likely had to sustain Holy from the attempts to diminish it. Though none of this is ever explicitly stated.
Before that, the planet had already tried and failed with WEAPON to fight off the forces of Sephiroth and Shinra. Which leads me to the conclusion that Aeris is why the lifestream stopped Meteor, not the planet. It is probably thanks to Bungenhagen teaching her that it all worked out in the end.
I think it was a lose/lose situation for the planet. Either it mobililzes all it's resources to fend off meteor and Sephiroth burrows into it like a tick (sucking planet juice all the while), or it tries to destroy Sephiroth and the meteor just keeps coming.
There's nothing stopping Sephy from summoning another meteor, he has the black materia.
That gay ass expanded universe shit with FF7 can eat a bullet. Liking JRPGs is bad enough but even JRPGs shove FF7's expanded universe garbage into lockers.
Gackt can choke on a memory stick duo.
Agreed, for the most part.
I don't get why they made Cloud emo when he's clearly insane and insecure.
Sephiroth is an odd one; I think of him as part of Jenova's life cycle, where it infests a life form that's pregnant, produces a viable offspring, gives that offspring incredible powers, and then uses that to create a cult around itself and absorb a planet's energy before cocooning itself into something that looks like a meteor from the remnants of the planet it last destroyed and wandering space in search of a viable planet to eat.
The intro and outros, where you see things from the perspective of the lifestream as it moves through space, indicate that the lifestream is a sort of universal life impulse - it seeks to nourish, grow, and build. Jenova is parasitic on that, hunting through space to find it's prey, or perhaps being summoned by others like it.
Some people question if Jenova is aware, and if Sephiroth is an improvement on Jenova - something with Jenovas abilities, but self-aware, which seeks godhood instead of food. I'm not sure which is true, but it certainly seems like something was whispering in his mind.
Whether or not he knew the truth about the Cetra and his origin is anyone's guess.
XII was good but only the International Zodiac version which limits the license boards and makes characters more unique. With that said, I also really enjoy the standard version of XII because I am autistic and like having a team of gods that smite mortals. Otherwise I thought FFIV did a pretty good job with ... jobs. Each character was assigned their job by the developer and you had to work with that. And then V was good. I don't get why a lot of people dislike that one.
12's issue was Vaan and to a lesser degree Penelo. Vaan is just obnoxious, Penelo less so. Balthier has a reason to be in the story, though maybe not so prominently. Fran is great as fan service, but otherwise she has the same issue. Had she or another Viera been working with the Empire to recover her connection to the Wood, researching it with the Empire, or seeking to expand it's influence to other wooded areas of the game, then she'd have a stronger connection to the plot.
Ashe and Basch could have been done better, but they should have been just one faction of the game rather than the main characters.
I think the SaGa guy ruined it, and was probably responsible somehow for getting the FFT guy booted off the project though internal politics shenanigans. Really a shame, I want to see what he would have made if left to his own devices.
Other issues include how it didn't play up the ambiguity of Venat - was he a rogue Occuria, making his own dynast king to cockblock the others? Or did he genuinely want humanity free from the domination of the Occuria?
The Archadians make some good points, and are arguably not bad guys. There should have been a branching storyline, with the option to join them, or perhaps a scenario thing where you can play as them before the strings of the story are woven together,
It would have a lot more replay value if certain characters were gated behind player choices in which faction to support, and if these characters were strongly differentiated by stats, gear, speed of attack animations, core licenses, and available jobs.
That's all just story stuff too, gameplay-wise it's pretty bad.
The randomness of the treasures, the pseudo-crafting loot+bazaar system, the fact that the bestiary didn't list any useful info about monsters - these are terrible. They should have had the bestiary unlock additional info after you kill enough of each monster, as well as listed their drops, steals, and poaches as you acquired them - and both of these should be available in the battle UI via libra.
The accessory effects are nice, but you can only pick one of them so it's pretty lame. They should have had a way to select more than one accessory, and balanced it around this.
Gear is generally poorly balanced.
Gambits don't allow enough customization and you need a hell of a lot more than 12 of them.
Most of the techniques suck, and they're hard to get compared to magic. They should have had a lot more techniques, and better ones.
The characters aren't strongly differentiated in terms of stats or viable gear. Plus some of them have animations that are really slow for some attacks - Balthier is slow with guns, and Fran is slow with Bows - which reduces their damage rate and viability with those weapons.
The license board in all versions if pretty bad. Each character should have a core of licenses that represents their innate skills and who they are, and the ability to graft one or two "classes" onto their license boards. So if Balthier is a Thief and Machinist, he should have a core of licenses that represents that, and then he can select let's say 1 or 2 from a set of 4 to 6 smaller license boards that emphasize one thing at the expense of another.
It would be nice to recruit generic mercenaries, customize them, and use them to pad out the party too.
Enemies would be more fun if they were smarter, had patrol patterns, and had enough sense to swarm you. If they had minimum and maximum levels for each area, but otherwise tracked your party levels, that would be great too.
hysical, Counter:Magic, Preempt
